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Jax is almost two. Almost two with a mind too big for his body and a thirst for learning and discovery that is insatiable. It daily chases me down with a need for guidance and creative play ideas.
Each evening I recount to Benjamin a story or three from the day. We laugh and sigh at the tragic humor and delightful moments that result from a Being who is almost two. Last night I was saying I need to write more of these down. It's easy for me to find the time to enjoy even a small crisis but harder to find the time to document it.
I recently attempted to make ketchup, which is traditionally a fermented food that was good for you, not a high-fructose-corn-syrup junk food. It wouldn't matter much except Jax has taken to wanting ketchup on everything from chicken to fish to eggs, or preferably eating it by the spoonful like soup. In those quantities, I wanted to make it a healthier food. I bought organic tomato paste, strained whey from organic yogurt, and it was actually simple to make. After two days of fermenting on the counter, the flavor was intense but fantastic.
Of course, one tiny taste and Jax wrinkled his nose and asked for "dat" ketchup (the one from the dollar store in the plastic bottle). I tried watering it down and adding more honey, tasting along the way to try for a similar flavor. Nope. I watered it down some more and as a measure of desperation emptied the contents of the plastic bottle into the sink and poured my ketchup from the glass mason jar into it. He was happy to try it this time, since I had deceived him, but his wrinkled nose with a single taste told the true story. He even refused to eat any if the scrambled eggs that had been on the plate with that terrible ketchup. Kitchen fail.
He broke a jar of sesame oil in the pantry a couple days ago. The pantry used to be a safe place for him to play, with metal cans in the bottom shelf, woks and funky utensils stashed against the floor. But he has learned to open almost any container and discovered how to use the stool we keep in there to get things off the high shelves. He was actually doing a good thing by getting a bib for himself off the third shelf, but he lost his balance on the stool, bumped the bin of bibs to the floor, and it caught the glass bottle of sesame oil on its way down.
"Accident! Clean a towel!", he said. I gave him a hug and closed the door on the glass and the smell so I could deal with broken glass later without his footsteps following my every move. These things happen. We are almost two.
The next morning was the first tough one. The first accident that he meant to do because it looked exciting and he had yet to learn it was naughty.
He colored with marker on the vintage chair we've been turning into a gorgeous rocker. Another one of my projects that I begin so blithely only to complete them a year later.
I was making the bed and heard his sweet voice in the other room.
"Color!"
My brain flashes red warning bells.
"Colors," is his universal word for anything that writes, paints, or gives color to paper. Watercolor, crayons, markers, pencils, pens. They are colors.
There shouldn't be any colors available in that room he is in.
"Color rocking chair!" I hear next, and the red warning lights flash and sirens erupt in my heart as I rush in to halt the tragedy unfolding.
It is too late. Soon enough to stop an increase to the damage but too late for two long streaks of red sharpie on the pale yellow fabric.
"NO!" Comes out of my mouth. Loud and insistent and firm but not screaming ugly.
"NO, we do NOT color on rocking chairs."
"Jax, that is not good, NO."
And his sensitive heart cracks and tears wet his soft cheeks.
"Jax clean a towel?" he says, words spilling over each other with the tears because he wants to mend the mess he made.
"Washing machine?"
"Daddy fix it?" because that's what I tell him when something is too broken for me to repair. Maybe Daddy can fix it.
And he sobs and asks to nurse because that mends all aches and tells him I still love him.
And I do. While I caress his tears and tell him that Mommy is very sad about the chair but he is more important to me than the chair.
He calms down while we nurse and when we are done he seems peaceful. We can both speak calmly about it and I say it one more time for the learning record,
"We only color on paper. We don't color on chairs."
And when Grandpapa enters the room an hour later, Jax tells him, taking his hand to show him the scene.
"Don't color rocking chair. Color paper."
When Daddy gets home Jax tells him again.
In bed that night, I am nursing and cuddling and singing him to sleep, and I begin the prayer that lists the names of all our family and their pets.
"God bless Daddy, God bless Mommy,"Jax interrupts me somewhere along the way.
"God (grunt grunt) rocking chair." And my heart melts a little because he is still thinking about that mess he made and knows we are going to need Big help to fix it.
He can say "bless" perfectly, but he has to think really hard about it, and thinking about how to say "bless" and what he wants to say after that word is too much, so he inserts an "uh" or two in its place.
I have worked on the smaller streak with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol, and there is a barely noticeable pink smudge that remains. The bigger problem was all the rubbing of the q-tip caused a lot of the old fuzzy upholstery fabric to rub off. I haven't started on the larger streak yet, so periodically Jax comes into the room and sees it, climbs up on the chair to touch the mark, and says, "Accident."
The thing is, adults make mistakes too. It was an adult mistake that left a red sharpie within a child's reach right next to a vintage yellow chair. We hopefully progress from mistakes like coloring on walls and jumping in cars, but we still make them.
And the accidents of our little ones only remind us of our own failures too, giving us the grace we need to teach them a life lesson, with humility and gentleness.
Because the accident I can make with his tender soul is a much bigger one than red sharpie on a vintage yellow chair.
